Comments on: … is the partisan? http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/05/31/218/ A working notebook Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:34:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: Nate http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/05/31/218/#comment-1447 Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:50:45 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/05/31/218/#comment-1447 In the discussion at LS, John Ransom pressed me on the idea of power being reactive. At the time of writing this piece I was more ambivalent about that idea. I'm clearer now. I think that idea is inadequatee. I wrote back to John that the idea of power being exclusively reactive is "a pretty key idea to a lot of stuff that's been important to me - Negri etc. It's also a central tension in Negri's work, in several directions. The important part for me is primarily basically a matter of ethical or political orientation - foregrounding our capacity to act rather than lamenting our many injuries and incapacities. I've just recently found a quote from Kant I like very much that relates, I think. We should "proceed as though everything depended upon [us]; only on this condition dare [we] hope that higher wisdom will grant the completion of [our] well-intentioned endeavors," it's from Religion Within The Bounds of Reason. Put another way, to my mind the point of departure has to be our power to (self)determine and the nonexhaustive nature of the ways we are already determined (self- and otherwise). On the other hand, this is at least partially in tension with the more concrete aspects I'm gesturing at by saying the should be methodological point rather than ontological. As much as I think the "proceeding as though" effect is important, precisely because of the "as though" this doesn't rely on any actual condition. That's part of my growing distance from Negri and such, as much as that work has been important to me - there's a sort of derivation of the power to proceed as though, rather than a positing or asserting thereof. In any case, all of that is I think in tension with taking the point as methodological, which to me means basically that the analysis of power relations in a more empirical sense should first of all be partisan - for Us and against Them - because there isn't any third or neutral point of view, and it should center on conflicts involved in the determination of various instantiations of power. I'm not as clear on this as I'd like to be, regarding technology in particular, but I think I'd want to say that this second aspect should be subordinate to the latter. So research into, say, the workings and constitution of labor law and workplace machinery like that done in vol 1 of Capital is valuable either for its ethical impact (what Benjamin calls the hatred, qua source of power, generated by the materialist historian) or for its practical use in organizational activity (for instance, if we know how the bosses responded in the past and in other activities in the present then we may be more likely to succeed in new initiatives)." Comment copied here for notebookly purposes. In the discussion at LS, John Ransom pressed me on the idea of power being reactive. At the time of writing this piece I was more ambivalent about that idea. I’m clearer now. I think that idea is inadequatee. I wrote back to John that the idea of power being exclusively reactive is “a pretty key idea to a lot of stuff that’s been important to me - Negri etc. It’s also a central tension in Negri’s work, in several directions.

The important part for me is primarily basically a matter of ethical or political orientation - foregrounding our capacity to act rather than lamenting our many injuries and incapacities. I’ve just recently found a quote from Kant I like very much that relates, I think. We should “proceed as though everything depended upon [us]; only on this condition dare [we] hope that higher wisdom will grant the completion of [our] well-intentioned endeavors,” it’s from Religion Within The Bounds of Reason. Put another way, to my mind the point of departure has to be our power to (self)determine and the nonexhaustive nature of the ways we are already determined (self- and otherwise).

On the other hand, this is at least partially in tension with the more concrete aspects I’m gesturing at by saying the should be methodological point rather than ontological. As much as I think the “proceeding as though” effect is important, precisely because of the “as though” this doesn’t rely on any actual condition. That’s part of my growing distance from Negri and such, as much as that work has been important to me - there’s a sort of derivation of the power to proceed as though, rather than a positing or asserting thereof. In any case, all of that is I think in tension with taking the point as methodological, which to me means basically that the analysis of power relations in a more empirical sense should first of all be partisan - for Us and against Them - because there isn’t any third or neutral point of view, and it should center on conflicts involved in the determination of various instantiations of power. I’m not as clear on this as I’d like to be, regarding technology in particular, but I think I’d want to say that this second aspect should be subordinate to the latter. So research into, say, the workings and constitution of labor law and workplace machinery like that done in vol 1 of Capital is valuable either for its ethical impact (what Benjamin calls the hatred, qua source of power, generated by the materialist historian) or for its practical use in organizational activity (for instance, if we know how the bosses responded in the past and in other activities in the present then we may be more likely to succeed in new initiatives).”

Comment copied here for notebookly purposes.

]]>